It’s August! And I’m not paddling yet. ”Free time” has been in short supply. My canoe project has taken a backseat to work. But, here we are again and I’ve got some progress to share.
The last Prospector chronicle left us with a fully constructed mold and some stems. My dad, Ron Klebba has helped with some of the process as well as my girlfriend, Laura Buchan. I’ve been hanging it from the ceiling from a pulley system and bringing it down when I’ve had time to work on it. That orange spraypaint you see on the strongback legs matches up with some orange spraypaint on the floor so I know it’s consistently level.
We’ve since milled that pile of cedar strips to it’s final thickness and put a cove on one edge and a bead on the other edge of each strip. We sent all the 18 foot strips through our wide belt sander then each strip went through two different router table set ups. That process was a bit annoying. It was pretty much a half day of router noise… not a glorious refined noise. If you’re planning on making a canoe and are not concerned with building or milling every aspect of your canoe, here’s a helpful link.
After the all the router milling, we spent some time fairing the molds to the curve of the boat. We spent a couple hours with handplanes and rasps, beveling the edges of the molds. We tacked a strip of cedar to the center mold and gently curved it towards the stems. This gives you an idea of the eventual shape of the hull and you shape the molds to it.
Then we shaped the inner stems. We took a shorter strip of cedar, curving it over the first and second molds towards the stems. From there, it was easy to see how to shape the stem to accept the planking. Dad excelled at this task. We made pretty quick work of the top near the shearline, then down the bow. We didn’t shape the stems all the way down — Dad recommended shaping them a little at a time — this made a whole lot of sense later, because it’s really hard to accurately tell exactly what the hull was eventually going to be shaped like — it’s easier going bit by bit and not taking off too much.
Ted Moores book “Canoecraft” primarily uses the staple system to make a canoe, wherein you adhere a strip to a strip with glue, then staple it to the molds to hold it in place while the glue dries. He discusses another, more elegant method in his book called the “stapleless system”. We opted for that. I didn’t want the look of staple holes in the side of my canoe. And, realistically, using wedges and shims to push the strips into each other creates a tighter gluejoint than just stapling a strip to the mold. And who doesn’t like a challenge, right? We’re fully grown mammals.
There was a lot of preperation next. You have to put packing tape or wax over the molds so the strips don’t stick from their glue squeeze out. We used packing tape. Then you have to make all sorts of small blocks out of plywood or hardwood to accept the first strip. Then you need to make a small army of hold down blocks that will accept a wedge and shim to push one plank into the last.
The first strip sets the stage for everything else. Bead down, cove up, set on blocking to hold it tight to the sheerline. You get to set a nice gradual curve with that first strip to start most of the other strips out on. I clamped it in place, stepped back, let gravity do most of the arch, and went for it. It is very important you level that first strip on each side to the other side — port and starboard. Or left and right.
Each strip gets glued to the next with a bead of glue in the cove and glued to the stems at the bow and stern. I handled the stems with my trusty cam clamps — they apply an appropriate amount of pressure and are quick.
The stapleless system makes good use of shims and wedges. You hammer in wedges til you see that sweet glue squeezeout over there in the right of the photo.
Move blocking. Glue. Place next strip. Screw blocking back in. Wedge. Shim. Clean glue squeeze out. Repeat.
Early in the process of stripping the hull, Dad went back to Michigan for the summer. I realized very quickly that I needed a second pair of talented hands… My girlfriend rules. Our date nights working on a canoe were much cooler than that romantic comedy you had to go to…
We used some of that color variation in the cedar to create some stripes on the canoe.
The strips flew on initially. When we got to the bilge (the underside curve of the hull) around the future waterline, the strips had a compound curve to them that was tricky to hold in place.
When clamping the ends of the planks to the stem, you have to get inventive. I made different wedges, odd shaped shims, used packing tape (Ted recommends this) and the occasional precarious clamp set up. Squeeze out? Check.
At this point, we’re past the stems.
The sheerline on the Prospector extends up (down on the mold) past the first strip. One thing that wasn’t too thoroughly explained in the book was this process, but I basically wedged cut off strips UP into that first strip. it worked really well. Later, we cut the gentle curve of the boat into these strips.
After both stems are covered by strips, we crossed the centerline on just one side of the hull. This process goes really fast compared to the bilge.
Once the centerline has been crossed completely with odd, jagged cutoff planks sticking out into the other half it’s time to cut the centerline. This process was very gratifying. We tacked a nail into the center of the bottom of each stem, then ran a piece of string between them.
From there, we took a nice, straight flat ruler sighting along the string and put a sharp line with pen into the cedar. Then we used chisels to cut right up to that line
That’s Laura Buchan chiseling up to the centerline. Laura is an amazing sculptor and I highly recommend you check out her work — she currently has pieces on display at The Northwest Woodworkers Gallery in Seattle.
After chiseling really close to the centerline, a rabbet plane puts the final edge on.
Center LINE.
Each strip from here on out has to be fitted from end to end. And because of the fact that there’s a bead that is going into a cove, each strip has to be a little bit longer than you think it should be… Laura and I had some serious cedar wrangling.
In Ted’s book, the last 2 strips are glued together at the curve, then basically scribed into place. The above shot is a picture of the setup we did on my workbench to glue them to the approximate curve.
Notice all of those curly shavings? I would try to fit it… then realize it was too tight, mark it, take a little bit more off with a hand plane, then do it all over again…
…until FINALLY I had the shape I was looking for.
Then, we put the glue on, put it in place, and tightened it with packing tape.
The final shape of the hull.
I really wonder now how many people have been ambitious enough to take on a canoe project around April and expect to use it by summer time, only to reassess and aim for fall. Or spring. Next up, we’re fitting the outer stems, SANDING, and then some… Enjoy the rest of your August… summer is fading FAST!
http://blog.phloemstudio.com/?p=432
part 1
I design and build furniture and cabinets for a living. In my “free time”, I try to get outside of the city and into the woods as much as possible. Nothing is quite as nice as being out on a mountain lake attempting to catch a fish or two. My shopmate Bren Reis and I are building canoes right now. We’ll each have a cedarstrip plank canoe hopefully sometime before the end of summer so we can actually get out on the water and enjoy them.
A cedarstrip planked canoe is a beautiful thing. It is made by milling up a whole bunch of 1/4″ thick cedar strips and wrapping them around a mold. Once the mold is covered in planking, it is sanded and covered with a layer of fiberglass on the inside and the outside, then coated in epoxy. It makes a very lightweight, yet strong wooden vessel. Please realize, that there’s a lot more to it than that easy summary.
We each picked up a book called “Canoecraft” by Ted Moores. It is considered by some to be the bible of cedarstrip canoe construction. Ted Moores presides over Bear Mountain Boats, in Peterborough, Ontario, where he gives workshops on building canoes, sells plans and kits, and has been an authority on wooden watercraft for decades.
Bren choose to build Bob’s Special, a 15 foot canoe known to handle well for anglers. I choose to build the 16 foot Prospector, known as a good “all around” canoe. My dad, Ron Klebba is a very accomplished woodworker who has built many very beautiful things throughout his life, among them 2 sailboats (both Herreschoff designs), 2 kayaks, and a few rowboats. His wisdom in this process has been highly appreciated and integral. These posts will be by no means a “how to”, but a document of our progress and the processes we used building our future yachts. I hope you enjoy it.
The above picture is a disaster captured and thankfully diverted. When making a 16 foot long canoe, you need to make a very large pile of Cedar strips that are 3/4″ wide and 1/4″ thick out of really long boards — we bought 16 to 18 foot boards. These strips will end up becoming the hull. If you send an 18 foot board through a planer, pay close attention so that it doesn’t get caught on something and bend like this board did. Apparently wood really is pretty elastic. You cannot sand that out. Thankfully we stopped the planer, pulled the board free and no one was hurt. And we got some awesome photos of this very unsafe tense board.
Ripping Cedar boards into 5/16″ thick strips. Over. And over. And over. And over.
The finished pile of ripped Cedar for one canoe. We will sand this with our wide belt sander to a final thickness of 1/4″… They will then be run through a router setup to make a cove and bead on each strip. More on that in another post…
This is the strongback. It’s basically a long beam-like structure made of plywood. It’s what the canoe is built on. It’s essential to make it as straight and level as possible, otherwise you’ll have a boat that doesn’t track straight.
Leveling the strongback up on its legs.
Cutting out the mold stations on the bandsaw. These will be placed on the strongback. They will form the negative space on the inside of the hull — the cedar strips will be glued together over them (not to them), forming the hull.
The mold cutoffs make a pretty cool pile of shapes on the concrete floor. After the mold stations are cut out on the bandsaw, they have to be shaped and sanded to make nice uniform fair curves. That process however does not make a pretty picture.
The stem molds (the bow and stern) are set first. After they are leveled and plumbed, we move on to the station molds in between. The Prospector, like most canoes, is symmetrical, so the bow and the stern are the same shape — unlike a sailboat or a kayak where the bow and stern are very different.
A string is run from one stem mold to the other, forming a centerline for the hull. The strongback has a centerline, as do the station molds. The string, strongback centerline, and individual station mold centerlines must all line up. This is done by using your eye and sighting down the string over the centerlines and cross checking with a level for plumb. It hurt my head and my eyes, but ultimately everything lined up.
Each stem mold gets an inner and outer stem. I made mine out of ash, a very strong wood that bends extremely well. In the book, Ted steams thicker wood then bends. We’re lucky enough to have a wide belt sander in our shop — so we were able to sand the ash thin enough to bend by hand. It’s glued up overnight with epoxy, clamped to that curve. The stems will be shaped to almost a point to accept the cedar strips at the ends of the hull. The plastic wrap around each stem is so the epoxy doesn’t bond to the mold or get all over your hands. It also keeps the strips from sliding against each other. 
We’re still miles away from paddling, but we just bought a 5 gallon tub of epoxy, so we’re officially committed. We’ll be shaping the stems and stripping the hull soon. Ever onward and until next time…
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